


With a thousand dreams, I'm holding heavy

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Infidelity, POV Female Character, Prophetic Dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-27 08:59:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6278047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daenys was named for a Dreamer, and becomes one in turn.</p><p>Her husband does not understand, but she does not mind. There are others to whom she can turn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Daenys, a Dreamer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simplyprologue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/gifts).



> Title taken from _Youth_ by Foxes.
> 
> This is all Emily's fault. Blame her.
> 
> Oh, I almost forgot: Happy St. Patrick's Day from your resident leprechaun <3

"I will be Queen," she says, her voice firm and even, pitched low enough that only Gerold might hear. "My brother will not reach maturity in time - it all falls on my shoulders."

Gerold Hightower has long believed that too much falls on the Princess' shoulders, and is unsurprised that she feels the weight of the world to be her burden to carry, too.

 

* * *

 

 

When Daenys Targaryen is five years old, she is introduced to her cousin, Robert Baratheon.

Robert is a year her junior, but taller than her - he is already massive in body and personality, following the Baratheons in size and in manner, and Daenys is unimpressed by him. She is as serious as he is gregarious, sombre for her tender years in a way that worries her mother and irritates her kingly father, and she is relieved when she apparently annoys Robert as much as he does her. 

"I thought princesses were supposed to be  _interesting,"_ he complains, shuffling about the patch of garden that has been set aside for their play. Ser Gerold is a pale tower in the sunlight, just a little ways away, and a guard in Baratheon livery stands at his side, a gilded shadow out of place in King's Landing. Robert, too, is out of place here, although he does not seem to realise it, and Daenys bites back a sigh at his criticisms. He is younger than her, after all, and does not understand.

"Princesses," Daenys says, "are supposed to live as the King wishes them to. Sometimes," she admits, grudgingly, "that is not very interesting, but that is how things are, and I for one do not wish to give my lord father cause for complaint."

Ser Gerold huffs, just barely loud enough for Daenys to hear, and she smiles - the White Bull is her favourite of all the brothers of her father's Kingsguard, as gentle with her as he is ferocious in her defence, and the only one who offers Mama an arm after she has been visited in the night. For that alone, Daenys might love him, but she loves him just as much for his insistence that his brothers regard her as heir to the Iron Throne, and guard her as such.

So few give her the respect that is her due as rightful Princess of Dragonstone, after all.

 

* * *

 

 

Daenys kisses a boy for the first time when she is eleven. 

His name is Lucerys Velaryon - nephew of the sitting Lord of the Tides, cousin to the pretty heir to Driftmark, Manford - and he is half-Pentoshi and wholly beautiful. 

(Later, he will serve her lord father, and will barely escape King's Landing unburnt. For now, he is taller than her by seven inches, older than her by one year, and her better at languages by two, thanks to a sea-faring uncle on his mother's side who taught him Ghiscari and Asshai'i, and Daenys thinks that he is what a lord of the court  _should_ be - Robert, who writes her plainly reluctant letters once a moon's turn from his foster-father's home of the Eyrie, falls far short of Lucerys' example.)

Daenys feels little when Lucerys presses a shy kiss to the corner of her mouth, blushing a little only because it is so improper, because her lady mother will worry and Ser Gerold will scold her, but not at all because of any warmth inspired by Lucerys' touch and proximity.

She kisses a girl for the first time a week later, curious to see if a change of sex will inspire any more powerful reaction, and is disappointed when she and Malora Hightower only blush and giggle when they draw apart, because it simply feels odd, not stirring and captivating as she has heard it  _should._

Robert presses a bruise-hard kiss to the corner of her mouth, the opposite side to Lucerys, when he visits court for her twelfth nameday. Their betrothal is announced, then, and while Robert has the gall to seem  _surprised,_ Daenys merely emulates her mother and tries very hard to seem serene and pleased by this most unwelcome news.

Of  _all the boys,_ she is to be saddled with Cousin  _Robert!_ Why, he will be a  _terrible_ consort!

His kiss comes in the gardens, while they are mostly unchaperoned, watched over only by Ser Gerold and his Baratheon shadow, and even they are at a distance. Daenys tries to avoid Robert's wet mouth, but he is large, and fast, and seems to think it his  _right_ , and protests as much when she slaps him in disgust.

"Few men in this realm would make the sort of consort you seek, Princess," Ser Gerold says thoughtfully as he leads her away, her hand tucked into his elbow. His pale plate is warmed by the sun in the gardens, and Daenys' always-warm hands do not fog the polished surface as they sometimes do in cooler weather. "And few boys will grow to be men such as you seek."

"Perhaps," Daenys says, annoyed more than she can say by the  _presumption_ Robert exhibited, thinking of Malora's cheerful agreement to Daenys' halting question, of Lucerys' shy flirting and how it had given way to steady hands cradling her head, and wondering why none of them are ever  _right._ "Perhaps, ser, I ought to look to Dorne."

He laughs at that, and Daenys remembers that he is a Reacher, and blushes.

"Your own biases aside," she forges on, biting down a smile at his continuing but quieted amusement, "it might be for the best - Dornish men know what it is to bend the knee to a woman, do they not? No man north of the Marches does, I think."

"There are some," Ser Gerold points out. "A handful, here and there, but they do exist."

"Ah," Daenys counters, a smile of her own blooming, "but none of them are wed to Lady Paramounts, much less Queens, are they?"

Ser Gerold's smile fades, and Daenys feels her own grow bitter, and they lapse into silence, undisturbed save for the echo of Robert's continuing complaints.

 

* * *

 

 

Father burns a man the day before Daenys' wedding. Mother is with child, and so will escape his passions, but Daenys feels only sorrow for the girl she dreamed would be called to share her father's bed, to slake his lusts after the fires.

The next morning, Daenys watches from behind a pillar as the girl, with her shock of fair hair, is carried from the King's chambers. 

Later that day, her father ignores her mother's pleas that he come to the sept to see Daenys married, and sends Lord Commander Hightower in his place. Daenys feels no guilt at all in her relief, for who else had the right to entrust her to Robert's care but Ser Gerold, who has been a light in the bloody shadows of the Red Keep all her life?

 

* * *

 

 

Her wedding night is-

She locks herself away in her study the next day, firmly ignoring her lady mother's suggestions that mayhaps she ought to have a maester look her over, ignoring even more firmly her lady mother's tentative excuses, that Robert doesn't know his own strength, that he will be better, that he will improve-

Daenys begins to read aloud, drowning out her mother's soft voice and, later, Robert's snarling embarrassment at having been abandoned in disgust by his new, royal wife not a full day after their marriage, and only stops when Ser Gerold knocks on the door and informs her that he has had food prepared for her and sent to her bedchambers, and that if she so wishes it, he will stand guard outside her door tonight, and keep even her new husband away.

She wishes it, and wishes she had had Ser Gerold to keep Robert away last night, so that she would not have drowned in the smell of wine on his breath and the echo of another woman's name on his lips.

 

* * *

 

 

She wakes up screaming from the nightmare-dream-vision, shaking from the cold that still clings to her mind, and is baffled by the expression on Robert's face.

His seed is still sticky on her thighs, so she knows that she has not been sleeping long, but it feels as though she was lost in that- in  _whatever_ that was for an eternity.

"You would not wake," Robert says, looking troubled, looking  _frightened,_ and Daenys is glad of whatever terror it was that haunted her sleep if only because it has stolen away Robert's impossible confidence. "I- I tried waking you, but you were so still."

She has dreams every night that Robert spends in her bed, dreams that leak into her waking thoughts as no others ever have, dreams that leave her shaking and screaming and leave Robert with trembling hands and clouded eyes, and there is something addictive in the whole of it.

Daenys, despite her distaste for Robert, and for the marital act, finds herself seeking out his bed. Ser Gerold sees, and she knows he disapproves, but he says nothing.

 

* * *

 

 

The dreams look like this:

There is a world, and there is nothing in it.

Sometimes, she sees the outline of what came before - war, defeat, death.

Sometimes, she sees that war, and there, she sees  _salvation._

 

* * *

 

 

"A dragon with three heads," she tells Malora and Elia, one already fanatical, the other already sceptical. "This is my duty to the world."

The blanket in her lap is sewn by her own head, a dragon in silver and gold and black, and she wonders if she will be able to give it to her firstborn, or if she will be expected to sacrifice it as a gift for the child now swelling her mother's belly - no one is sure which child will be born first, or even if her lady mother will be delivered at all, after the child she lost so close after Daenys' wedding.

Robert is away visiting at the Eyrie, seeing Jon Arryn and hearing, from Eddard Stark, of the girl who holds his heart, and Daenys hopes that he remains there until after her child is born. It will look like him, a girl with shiny black curls and overlarge bruise-blue eyes, and Daenys hopes that she is right in naming this child  _Visenya,_ not  _Rhaenys_.

She thinks that she is - no child of House Baratheon could have the subtlety of Rhaenys Targaryen, not with centuries of storms singing in her blood, and so it will be as it was before, Visenya, than Aegon, then Rhaenys.

Daenys has dreamt it, and knows it will be so.

 

* * *

 

 

Visenya is born two days before her uncle, and Daenys finds herself genuinely surprised when she hears the celebrations for the birth of the Prince of Dragonstone.

Dragonstone has been hers since the day she was born, save for the scant few days her short-lived brothers held the title, but it has been so long since there has been a healthy child born to her mother that Daenys had  _presumed..._

Ah, well. Her brother is a babe-in-arms, and not popular as she is. When the time comes, she will be so much better established, with a son and two daughters, with a powerful, mystifyingly popular husband, with friends from Dorne to the Wall, and it will be a small thing to install her brother as Prince of Summerhall and install herself on the throne.

Summerhall will have to be restored, of course, and Daenys is sad for that - she visits, sometimes, when she can make suitable excuses for such an excursion, and finds peace in the ruins of so much sorrow, finds  _home_ there as she does not anywhere else - but the loss of her sanctuary is a small sacrifice to make for the sake of the realm.

"She has her father's colouring," Ser Gerold says, glancing sidelong as Daenys nurses Visenya, "but I daresay she has some of your look, Your Highness."

Daenys cannot help but beam, and Ser Gerold smiles just a little in return.

 

* * *

 

 

"Uncle Aemon believes that my husband will kill me if I even consider doing that which I must," Daenys says, feeling strangely calm despite her great-granduncle's warnings. She has been writing to Aemon at the Wall for years now, is proud to call such a wise, brilliant man her friend as well as her kin, and feels that she ought to be a little concerned now that he has misgivings.

Arthur Dayne looks back over his shoulder at her, all delicate features and hard lines and soft, starlight-silver hair, looking almost as much a dragon as she does herself, but with the blood of different ancients running in his veins. He has been on the Kingsguard since he was nineteen, is five years her senior and even more beautiful than Lucerys, and if she were any other woman, Daenys could believe herself in love with him.

Instead, she is glad of him, glad that in him, she has a man she can trust, one other than Ser Gerold and Uncle Aemon. 

"If you think this too dangerous, Princess," he says seriously, "then I will leave. I would not see you come to harm."

A silver dragon, a gold, and a black. She has her black-haired Visenya, Arthur will give her her silver-haired Aegon - she has dreamt it, so it is true - and as for her golden-haired Rhaenys... Well. It is early yet. There is time enough.

"I am determined, ser," she says, holding out a hand and smiling just a little when Arthur pauses long enough to pull his shirt over his head in a sweep of pale linen and rolling muscle before taking her invitation. "Now, come to my bed."

He is different from Robert in all ways, and though she suspects him to think of another woman, she does not mind - Elia Martell is a woman worthy of the sort of love Arthur obviously bears her, and besides, Arthur does not cry out  _Elia, Elia!_ as he spills his seed into Daenys' cunt.

Robert could learn a great deal from the Sword of the Morning.

 

* * *

 

 

Robert never suspects a thing, and that is in no small part thanks to the Kingsguard.

Daenys loves her father's guards, the pale sentinels who loom bright in the midst of the darkness her father burns into the very stone of the Red Keep, and trusts even those she does not know so well as Ser Gerold - Prince Lewyn has figured out some of her intrigue, she sees it in the way he glances between her and Arthur, just once, and never pays it any mind ever again, and that is not the only little piece of protection they give her, unasked and most welcome.

As her belly swells, weighed down by a child she knows will be the very image of his father, a father who looks enough like a Targaryen for the resemblance to escape notice, to keep Robert's rare shrewdness from realising that she has cuckolded him, Daenys dreams, and sees that she has not so much time as she thought.

This, she shares only with Ser Gerold, and he with only Ser Arthur and Ser Oswell, and Daenys trusts Ser Gerold's judgement enough not to question Ser Oswell's inclusion in their activities.

 

* * *

 

 

"A golden haired Rhaenys," Daenys says quietly as Aegon sleeps against her breast, already a different child to Visenya in more than just his sex - he is long and slender where she was big and sturdy, watching everything in a quiet way as much like Daenys' own as it is like Arthur's. Visenya has been and gone, three years old and easily bored, and Robert... 

Well, he has no use for her children, for any children save those he dreams of sharing with Lyanna Stark, but he has done his duty and hailed Aegon as a fine child, leaving the business of names and care to her, even though Daenys herself has heard the mockery at Robert's expense over their children's names.

"Were I a younger man," Ser Gerold says, quietly amused as he has been by her planning since he made his peace with that which is required of her - the White Bull, ready to charge to her defence should her hard work be shown up and shamed. "Were I a younger man, Princess, I might offer my own golden hair, but I fear it is too long white by now."

Daenys laughs - truly laughs, as she only does with Ser Gerold, with Elia, with Malora, with Arthur - and then she sighs, cradling Aegon close, stroking his pinfeather hair as she thinks.

"There is one who may be of use to be in this," she says, slowly, considered, "but he is too young just yet. Perhaps- I think I may have to call on Arthur's services once more, although not in any way that will call his vows into question, this time."

 

* * *

 

 

Aegon looks so impossibly small in Arthur's long hands, cradled against Arthur's broad chest, and Daenys wonders how it is that she has no memory of Robert holding Visenya in that same wonderstruck way.

"Anything I can do for you, Princess," he says, tracing a calloused thumb over Aegon's delicate cheek. "For this gift you have given me, I can never repay you. I never dared to think I might... Even before I swore myself to the King, I never imagined myself as a father. My brother, my sisters, House Dayne would live on in them, but I was marked as Sword of the Morning from childhood, and there is a loneliness in bearing a sword such as Dawn."

"A similar loneliness to that bestowed by a crown," Daenys agrees. "Do this one thing for me, Ser Arthur, and it is I who will be in your debt, as I am already."

 

* * *

 

Jaime Lannister has stars in his sharp green eyes when he is brought to court to finish his training under Arthur's guidance, and Daenys thanks Arthur in moments stolen with Aegon, by bringing his beloved little sister to court - this is a thanks also for Elia, who has been the most wonderful friend and support, and who loves Ashara Dayne nearly as much as Arthur does - and by ensuring that Tywin Lannister has no influence over how Arthur trains his son.

Daenys watches them, sometimes, with Visenya and Viserys playing at her feet, sitting by the edge of the practice yard under a silken canopy sewn with Baratheon stags, Aegon dandling on her knee and Ser Gerold at her shoulder.

Robert is often there as well, as obtrusive as a thunderstorm on a spring day, and Daenys hates him for it, sometimes. Most of the time, she is bored of him, and wonders how her mother ever thought they could make a happy marriage.

 

* * *

 

 

Daenys wonders, after Jaime Lannister has been made  _Ser_ Jaime, under her watch, under Arthur's sword, after he has been made a man under her body, why it is that every man not in a white cloak looks at her and sees another, or wishes to see another. 

It amuses her, some little bit, that Jaime Lannister may sire a child with certain specific Targaryen tendencies, when she herself is mildly repulsed by those same leanings.  _Cersei, Cersei!_ and  _Lyanna, Lyanna!,_ and only polite, respectful silence, aside from what noises of pleasure he could not stifle from Arthur. 

As ever, it is only the brothers of the Kingsguard on whom she can rely. Somehow, it does not disappoint her.

 

* * *

 

 

Her father names Jaime Lannister to the Kingsguard when she is seven months gone with Jaime's bastard, and Daenys works very hard not to catch Ser Gerold's eye over her father's shoulder. 

She will laugh if she does, and that would shame Ser Jaime. She will not do that, not while Rhaenys dances in her belly thanks to him.

 

* * *

 

 

Viserys is crowned King, despite calls for Daenys to sit the throne, but Daenys finds that she does not mind. She sacrificed a crown for Jaime's safety, and Jaime sacrificed his vows for the safety of the realm, so she thinks that her loss is the smaller of the two.

Summerhall is her consolation, and while it seems fitting that she rebirth it after it died while she was born, she does not spend much time there. Once her men have ferreted out her great-grandfather's dragon eggs from the rubble, once she has made them secure and ensured that they are hidden away from Robert, safe in Ser Gerold's chambers in the White Tower, where even Viserys cannot find them.

No, Summerhall is her seat, just as Storm's End is Robert's, but neither one of them ever sit where they belong. Robert has grown suspicious of her, and hungry for more power, and has left Storm's End in his brother's eminently capable hands. Summerhall is new, does not have much in the way of lands to govern, and so Daenys doesn't see any problem in installing Selena Cetigar, her cousin through her great-grandfather's younger sister, as her castellan. 

She trusts Selena as much as she trusts anyone outside of the brothers of the Kingsguard, Elia, and Malora, trusts her to bring anything of interest that is found in what ruins are yet unrepaired directly to Daenys' own hands, bypassing the royal chronicler. There is a chance that there might be more eggs, after all, and Daenys has dreamt of what might happen, if Viserys were to lay hands on a dragon egg, much less on a  _dragon._

 

 

 


	2. Daenys, a Dancer.

"We're bastards," Rhaenys says evenly, gesturing between herself and Aegon. "Aegon and I are not Father's children, are we?"

Rhaenys is nearing five-and-ten, Aegon seventeen and Visenya twenty, and it is a joy to have them all with her - here, at Summerhall, they are safe, and now that her children are old enough to hold their tongues, Daenys sees no reason to keep this secret from them any longer.

"You are all my children," she says, "but yes, you have different fathers, my loves. Have you puzzled out who they are?"

Visenya, bold Visenya with Robert's face and Robert's temper but some quiet sense of purpose that Daenys thinks must come from Aegon the Unlikely, Visenya's great-great-grandfather twice over, is the first to speak.

"I, at least,  _am_ a Baratheon," Visenya says, stroking long fingers over the shell of her blood-and-midnight dragon's egg. "Father could not deny me even if he shaved my head and poked my eyes out - I have too much of his nature for that."

"True enough," Daenys agrees, approves. Visenya's ferocity has been a blessing and a bane both to them during Viserys' reign, first in repulsing his obsessive desire to marry her, then in soothing his temper when Daenys, through Robert, approved Visenya's betrothal to Tyrion Lannister.

Viserys has only seemed more in love with her, since she birthed her first babes, sweet twin boys named Gerold and Jason. Tall, for not quite three years of age, and strong, one with Visenya's Baratheon look and the other pure Lannister, the boys are Viserys' obsession even more than the dragon eggs he is sure Daenys found at Summerhall.

Ser Gerold, of course, has never breathed a word of the eggs, and so Viserys' sureness means nothing without proof. Even the children do not know for certain that Daenys found the eggs, even though they are the ones who will ride the dragons.

"I know who my father is," Aegon says, his smile so like Arthur's that Daenys' breath catches in her throat. Arthur, the best man Daenys has ever known, who gave himself to save her from one of Viserys' odious little Essosi friends who so resent the influence she has over the throne.

Oh, Viserys had proved himself their father's son for that. Ten men, stripped of their fine robes and separated from their vast wealth, hanging by their wrists and burning from the soles of their feet up. It has been easier to gather people to her side, quietly, since then, and while that makes the loss of Arthur  _easier,_ it does not  _ease_ it.

"You are so like him," Daenys says, lilting over the pain because it's easier than acknowledging it. "He was always so proud of you. He loved you so much."

"And I him," Aegon says, his smile turning sad. "Ser Arthur was always so kind."

Aegon has that same quiet determination as Visenya, but there is a delicacy in him that reminds Daenys so much of his late aunt, the lovely Lady Ashara, who had died only months before Arthur, of a queer illness that had begun as a small lump under her arm and which had, by the end, robbed her of her strength and beauty and sanity.

Yes, Aegon has that same ethereal loveliness as Ashara, as Arthur, as Daenys' tiny sister, Daenerys, who is a little less than a year younger than Rhaenys, and the purpose that Daenys is sure is all Targaryen, and something that is just his own, a sort of immovable good sense that bends people to his will through sheer refusal to be convinced that he is wrong.

"I wish Ser Arthur had been  _my_ father," Rhaenys says, her voice low, as gilded as her hair, and Daenys' heart aches for the child who has borne the worst of the whispered shame.

Rhaenys' hair is silver-gold, not true Targaryen silver-white, and while as a child she had clung to Shiera Seastar's silver-gold hair and two-tone eyes, oh, the association with a bastard had been too dangerous, and Daenys had been forced to rob her sweetling of one of the few things that gave her true comfort. 

Guiding her toward Elaena of the Maidenvault had eased the pain a little, of course, and when most of the gold had washed out of Rhaenys' thickly curling hair, leaving only a handful of heavy streaks against the silver, it had been an association that others had been quick to draw, but Rhaenys' green right eye has been cause enough for question. Rhaenys has grown into a strikingly beautiful young woman, the most beautiful woman Daenys has ever seen, and that has only made enemies for her, enemies who would pounce on those traits she inherited from Jaime if they thought they could tear her down.

It is Rhaenys' charm, that same brazen, cheeky charm as her father possessed before time and the weight of his white armour made a sombre man of him, that has gathered so many to their side, quietly, under Robert's notice, beyond Viserys' attention, and Daenys could not be prouder of her. 

"You have much to thank the Kingslayer for, little one," Daenys says, guiding Rhaenys to lay her shining head in the deep purple-blue velvet of her lap. "His sword allowed us to come this far, after all, when it ran your grandfather through, and your uncle's fear of your father's sword has given us much room in which to attain our goals."

Very true - Daenys is not in the habit of lying to her children, save occasionally by omission, and Viserys lives in terror of becoming the kind of man who earns the Kingslayer's golden sword in the gut. That has kept him to his pretty little Queen's bed, has kept him from laying hands on Visenya, Rhaenys, or Daenerys, has kept him from seeing Daenys or Aegon dead, despite how much he fears them.

Viserys, after all, does not have any children, much less a son. Aegon is his heir apparent, although Daenys knows that she has as many supporters as her precious boy, and Viserys loathes them both for fear of what they might do, if he shows weakness.

"You are not bastards," Daenys says, "at least, not so that it matters, because none of you save Visenya will inherit any Baratheon holdings, my loves."

Viserys will die, and Aegon will become King. Visenya, and after her Jason, her black-haired boy, will take Storm's End, and Rhaenys...

Rhaenys has always been destined for the worst of it, which is likely why Daenys has spoiled her so.

 

* * *

 

 

"You spend so little time at court, sister," Daenerys says breezily, her tiny hand linked into Daenys' elbow. Daenys always feels so overlarge, so clumsy, beside her tiny slip of a sister, and so  _old_ \- her time is coming to an end, but Daenerys' is surely just beginning, fifteen years old and the loveliest girl in the realm, after Daenys' daughters. 

"Well, I am here now, little stormfly," Daenys assures her, bending down to brush a kiss to Dany's temple. "And we have all the time in the world, for now."

Rhaenys is due to marry Quentyn Martell on the morrow, a boy so serious and plain that there are few who can see the attraction - and it is well known that Rhaenys pursued him relentlessly, begging Robert, begging Daenys, even going so far as to beg Viserys, because a lifetime spent in the midst of dazzling beauty has given Rhaenys an uncanny ability to see the true heart of a man, and Quentyn Martell's heart is as good as his aunt Elia's ever was.

But yes, Rhaenys' marriage means that House Baratheon, such as it is, must all dance attendance on the King, since he has so  _kindly_ offered to host the wedding in King's Landing, and so Daenys will be at court for longer than she has been since Arthur's death, able to gauge the true lie of things before she begins the final stages of her plan.

"Mama has missed you terribly," Dany confesses, looking a little embarrassed to be saying the words aloud. Ser Gerold and Ser Jaime are behind them, and neither seems to notice a thing - they never do, and Daenys loves them for it. "Viserys says the most terrible things to her, Daenys, that- that she ought to have been  _stronger,_ so that he might have had a sister to marry, instead of being too young for you and too old for me."

Daenys had almost had Viserys killed, when Dany turned twelve and suddenly became surpassingly lovely, because he had ranted and raved that he would wed her, the alliance with the Eyrie be damned - somehow, their lady mother had turned him away from that, and Rowena Arryn, with her sparrow-slight shoulders and magpie-blue-black hair and snowcloud-grey eyes, had become Queen. Daenys is thankful to her mother to this day for it, because marriage to Viserys would have destroyed Dany.

Instead, Dany will wed Lucerys Velaryon's son, a tall, handsome boy with Lucerys' sweetness and his lovely face, a boy named  _Rhaegar_ , a Targaryen name so old it hasn't been used in generations. Daenys only hopes that both of them will survive what is to come, so that they might know happiness.

"I will deal with Viserys," she promises Dany, patting her sister's hand and smiling. "He will not speak thus to Mama after I am done with him."

 

* * *

 

 

Robert is drunk, and as red as the sun on the Martell cloak Quentyn wraps around Rhaenys' shoulders, and Daenys holds tight to his arm all through the ceremony, to keep him from embarrassing their sweet girl.

Well, Daenys' sweet girl. Robert has never known what to do with the children, even Visenya, who is his, or Aegon, who is his son, at least in name, because none of them are so boisterous as him, or so sombre as Ned Stark.

Rhaenys glows - with happiness, with pride, with  _freedom,_ because she will be away from court and from Robert by the new moon, free to be as strong and fierce as Daenys has always known her to be. Dorne will suit her, and Daenys is happier than she has words for, that Rhaenys will have a chance to be free, even if it is only for a little while.

She is so beautiful that she makes her plain prince seem handsome, an almost painful joy overflowing his unremarkable face and making it beautiful. Daenys is glad that he so obviously adores Rhaenys, glad that Rhaenys has at least one person outside of Daenys and Visenya and Aegon who loves her without question, without doubt. 

"Fucking Dornishman," Robert grumbles into his cup, while Rhaenys and Quentyn dance their first dance as man and wife. "Why the fuck she couldn't just choose a  _normal_ husband-"

"If you dare to bring up your plan to see your children wed to Lyanna Stark's children," Daenys says sweetly, nails digging hard into the fleshy underside of Robert's wrist, "I will take up my knife and castrate you,  _my love._ "

Daenys is only glad that little Rowena Arryn takes after her father more than her mother, aside from those sharp grey Stark eyes, because it has spared her Robert's groping, grasping hands - Ashara Dayne's daughter is not so lucky, Ned Stark's daughter and a Stark in looks, Arya is a witty little spitfire who has learned to never be in a room with Robert unless her father is with her, too.

Rowena has enough with Viserys as a husband. She does not need Robert trying to make her his mistress, too. 

But today is not for sad thoughts - today is for joy, for the sort of happiness Daenys has only ever glimpsed in her deepest dreams, those beyond the war and the fear.

 

* * *

 

 

Viserys, now, Viserys is a problem - and Daenys has learned that the best way to deal with a problem is  _swiftly._

But he is a King, and she cannot ask another brother of the Kingsguard to kill another King, not after the pain she inflicted on Jaime by having him kill her father. So it is in her hands, and perhaps...

In her mother's.

Mama loves Viserys, but she sees how much like their sire Daenys' brother has become. The malice, the paranoia, the  _fire,_ Mama sees it all. Mama  _knows._

And Daenys need only tell her the truth that Rowena Arryn hides under the long cuffs and bell sleeves she has made so popular to make Mama see that this is the only way.

The poison they choose is painless, because Mama does love him that much, but it is efficient, and that is what matters.

Daenys does not weep - she holds Dany, and Mama, and allows them to weep, and she watches her children lay their beloved dragon eggs on the pyre, one at Viserys' head, one under his right arm, one between his legs.

Rowena does not weep, either, only watches curiously, with those storm-grey eyes, and when she lays the torch on the pyre, in a sleeveless gown of silver-white samite, there is victory there, where there might have been sorrow, had Viserys been another man.

 

* * *

 

 

The dragons do not go to

why do they not

_but she saw it all in her dreams_

A flash of crimson wing and Daenys has a weight not unlike a child against her breast-

a dart of golden talon and her eldest goodson is weighed down by something not his-

a shriek from an emerald throat and her goodsister's bare arms are suddenly full-

 

* * *

 

 

The black and red dragon who should have been Visenya's coils small enough to rest in the palm of Daenys' hand, its skinny little tail wrapped around her wrist. It mewls like a kitten, so small and fragile that Daenys hardly dares to move for fear of hurting it.

"I was so wrong," she whispers, only for Ser Gerold's ears. "How was I so  _wrong,_ ser?"

"Perhaps, Princess," he says, sitting by her side for the first time in her memory, "you were not so wrong as you think. Would Aegon be a fit King if Robert Baratheon's blood ran in his veins? Would Jaime Lannister have killed your father and kept your secrets had he not loved the child he planted in your belly, even if he has always wished to pretend otherwise?"

"I will never know, old friend," she says, leaning her head against his pauldroned shoulder. "But now I have dragon riders such as I should not have, and I might have spared my children so much  _pain-"_

"You have dragon riders such as the gods have decided you ought to have," Ser Gerold cuts in firmly. "Lord Tyrion has already charmed his little beast so thoroughly that it coos whenever he is within sight, and the Dowager is... Remarkably attuned to her creature. More even than you are."

Yes, Daenys has noticed the way Rowena's eyes go blank whenever her little dragon goes exploring, and wonders if the reports of skinchanging Starks in the ancient scrolls Aemon sent her might be true. Rowena has enough of her Northern mother in her that it seems possible that she might have inherited some stranger Stark traits.

"If your dreams had showed you this path, my lady," Ser Gerold says, his voice hardly more than a whisper, "rather than the one you followed, do you think the realm would be even half so peaceable as it is now?"

"I had not considered that," she admits, wondering how she might have drawn Lannisters and Martells and Arryns and Tyrells all to her side without her darlings, wondering how she is to convince the whole of Westeros that they ought to march north to fight an army of ice and death.

"If Aegon was not himself," she says slowly, "then we would not have a King to convince our armies to march North. If Rhaenys were not herself, we would not have a Princess to lead our people on the ground. If Visenya were not herself, we would not have a Princess to... To..."

"To watch over all those who cannot fight the cold," Ser Gerold agrees. "She is the best of you both, my lady. She will guide Aegon when you cannot anymore."

"As will you," Daenys reminds him, and feels something flicker under her ribs when his smile turns sad.

"Ah, my little Princess," Ser Gerold says, folding his hand over hers. "How could I ever leave your side for long enough to become an advisor to your son?"

The white dragon to lead the van, to bring the first assault on the winter that lies beyond the Wall. The green to fly over the main part of the battle, to demolish as much of the cold armies as can be destroyed without their masters' deaths.

And the black, to melt the very ice which gives those creatures birth, beyond the veil of light. Daenys has seen all of this a thousand times, had watched her babes suffer, had watched Rhaenys die a glorious death in battle and Visenya fade weeping into the light and Aegon survive just long enough to see a son born.

But they are spared, now, and it is Daenys who will weep into endless day, Rowena who will die to topple their King, Tyrion who will survive to tell their stories.

Perhaps Ser Gerold is right. 

Daenys smiles at the thought, because if Ser Gerold is right, then simply birthing her babes has been enough to save them from the fate she had thought them damned to, all this time.

"How could I ever ride to war without you at my side, my dearest friend?" she says, turning her hand to squeeze his calloused fingers. "Before then, though, you must show me how to use a sword - there is one that was found at Summerhall which may fit my hand."

Ser Gerold smiles again, wider now, and rises to his feet with his hand still in hers.

"It has been a long while since Dark Sister tasted blood," he says. "Come then, Princess. Let us dance."


End file.
